Industrial Design

Industrial design is the beginning of translating key insights captured in research, product requirements, and business objectives into a vision of what the future product will look like, function like, and support the brand of the client. Since 1934, Brooks Stevens has been nationally recognized for its industrial design for many of the top brands in the world. Industrial design is tasked with making an emotional connection between product and end user. Industrial design is also the steward of our client’s brand, often defined as the Visual Brand Language (VBL) of the product or product family.

Product Styling

Industrial designers have often been stereotyped that they create designs that are beautiful, but difficult or costly to produce. Not at Brooks Stevens! Our industrial design team has a broad knowledge base of manufacturing processes and materials so even the earliest of conceptual design have elements of manufacturability. In other words, creativity founded on reality.

Early conceptual designs are delivered as sketches that illustrate the product’s overall styling direction, product architecture, and branding. Later, concepts are refined with renderings (2D or 3D) with a higher fidelity of detail, making it easy to transfer the design to engineering development.

Engineering Collaboration

At Brooks Stevens, our industrial designers aren’t just stylists, they’re also problem solvers. Our founder had a philosophy that is still part of our brand promise: “I am a businessman, an engineer and a stylist, in that order”. At Brooks Stevens, industrial designers and mechanical engineers work side-by-side, often evaluating the design from the viewpoint of both parties. Engineers make sure a design is founded on manufacturing realities, without stifling creativity. Conversely, industrial design ensures that engineering maintains the design intent.

Ergonomics and Human Factors Design

For some products, the “feel” or other human factors of design are just as important as the styling. Whether it’s a hand grip of a power tool that just feels right, or the locations of switches, levers, and seating in an agricultural vehicle, or the User Interface layout of a touch display, Brooks Stevens industrial designers factor these attributes in the product design with just as much emphasis and empathy as the product styling. We fabricate form study models, ergonomic bucks, or UI simulators early in the design process to gain insights and learnings that you can’t get from computer models alone.

Additional Capabilities

Computer-generated renderings

3D Animations

Visual Brand Language and Logo Development

Graphics and Packaging Design

System Architecture

UI and UX Design

Ready to embark on an industrial design project with Brooks Stevens? Contact us to learn how we can help you stand out from the competition.